Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons^™

Toward A Social Justice Emphasis In Preservice Teachers’ Inquiries In Small Liberal Arts Contexts, Lucy Mule

Journal of Practitioner Research

Scholars underscore the need to study core features and outcomes of preservice teacher (PST) inquiry. This qualitative study identifies facilitation as a key feature, and a social justice inquiry stance as an important outcome. The author analyzed PST inquiry reports from a graduate-level course, noting that fewer than half of the reports were focused on social justice and, despite a weak program emphasis, PSTs were adopting this inquiry stance. Analysis of student feedback surveys and instructor notes revealed that providing clear and structured processes, consistent written feedback, and frequent meetings with facilitator and peers were effective facilitation strategies. Additional strategies …

Social Justice And The Us Food System: A Critical Course On The Human Dimensions Of Food, Ali Brooks

Food Systems Master's Project Reports

Our world is made up of overlapping political, environmental, and economic spheres that engender social injustice and inequality. Though separate societal issues can seem divergent and unconnected, they are all linked together by one universal necessity: food. Because everyone eats, everyone is connected to—and dependent on—food and the systems that govern it. However, the impacts of our industrial food system are not felt equally among people who hold different positions of power within it.

Today’s industrial food complex operates on the capitalist principle of profit accumulation through exploitation, commodification, and extraction. This set of relations is not defined by scale …

Pre-Service Teachers' Implicit Bias: Impacts Of Confrontation, Reflection, And Discussion, Katherine E. Batchelor, Kendra Dewater, Kennedy Thompson

Journal of Educational Research and Innovation

Abstract: Although there is much research regarding implicit bias in numerous fields, such as criminal justice, psychology, and health, little research has examined pre-service teachers’ attitudes and beliefs regarding implicit biases they carry, especially when it comes to race. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to fill the gap in qualitative research regarding how pre-service teachers address, confront, and talk about biases. We begin by defining implicit bias. Next, we situate our research within sociocultural theory with an emphasis on critical literacy practices. Then, we share our findings, which centered on the course environment, students’ reactions to their results …

Entitled Or Engaged?, Kate Collins

Greater Faculties: A Review of Teaching and Learning

Recent student activism on campus, particularly around safe spaces, trigger warnings, and microaggressions, has led to rising criticism lobbied against millennials as a generation unwilling to engage opposing beliefs or challenging discourse. Yet, taking into consideration all that young adults navigate to pursue higher education, their dissident presence on campus does more to reveal how they actively participate in the world, including their education.

Becoming A Social Justice Educator: Emerging From The Pits Of Whiteness Into The Light Of Love. A Response To "Respect The Differences? Challenging The Common Guidelines In Social Justice Education, Kay F. Fujiyoshi

Democracy and Education

This paper addresses the limitations of social justice in institutional spaces and in rhetoric. I write in the form of a quest narrative to describe the lessons I learned from a brief sojourn in a temporary position in an urban teacher education program with a social justice focus and at a nonprofit organization with other social justice workers. My quest entails a retelling of encounters with Whiteness, the challenges of engaging social justice as a process that pushes beyond conversation, and the lessons I took away from my own sense-making of the contradictions in social justice work.

Prophetic Imagination: Confronting The New Jim Crow & Income Inequality In America, Cornel West

Engaging Pedagogies in Catholic Higher Education (EPiCHE)

On October 11, 2014, Cornel West delivered the keynote address to nearly 600 students at the regional Leadership & Social Justice Conference, hosted at Saint Mary’s College of California. The conference occurred two days before West was arrested in Ferguson, Missouri, during a demonstration to protest the killing of young Black men by White police officers, as in the case of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson. Speaking of the students, West said, "I would like to see these precious young people commit themselves to lives of integrity, honesty and decency, where they are vigilant against all forms of evil—White supremacists, …